Getting Started with Guest Posting - Whiteboard&nbspFriday

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, I am going to be walking through how to get started guest blogging. There are plenty of articles all over the web that go into the finer details of guest blogging, but let's step back for a second and really talk about how to get started.

From getting into the guest blogging mindset to building up your list of guest blogging opportunities, we'll cover this topic from a top down approach.

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Eric Enge with Stone Temple Consulting. I'm here at SEOmoz to do a Whiteboard Friday today. We're a 25 person online marketing company that does consulting services for various people through the industry. What I actually want to talk about is how you get started with guest posting. There's a lot that goes into it, and there have been some great articles on SEOmoz that really get into the details of some of the aspects of it. But I want to step back and take you from the top down to help you get started.

The first thing I want you to think about is the mindset. The mindset is really important. There's a lot of stuff out there, guest blogging services that offer you all kinds of "sounds almost too good to be true" type options. The reality is, for the most part, they are too good to be true. Done well and done right, this is hard work, but it can bring really good returns. What I'm going to do today, I'm really going to focus on the high-
end approach to guest posting and how you get posts that are really brand building in nature. So let's dig in a little bit further.

The first thing I want you to do is I want you to tap into your team knowledge. Get your key team members together. Get them in a conference room. Get them brainstorming. Where are the places you'd love to be covered in an article? Great place to start, because after all, some of them it might be possible.

Once you have that kind of list in your mind, the next thing to do is to actually go check and see if they take posts. They may or may not have a policy on their site. If they do, that's a great thing to look for and can be very helpful. But sometimes they take guest posts without actually ever having been quite so overt about it. You can basically take this query here, site:targetdomain.com, whatever it is, and then put "guest post" or
"guest contributor" or "guest author." You can try different phases, and see whether or not they've ever taken those kinds of guest contributions in the past. Great place to start. Hopefully that gets you off to a good start.

If that's not enough, you can actually go to next step, which is you can try some industry search terms. You can try things like, let's say you're in the Tupperware business. Tupperware and then guest post and you search on that in Google. That can be very helpful in potentially bringing targets up.

These kinds of queries tend to be very noisy. You can actually do the same thing with Twitter by the way. There is a tool that somebody posted up on SEOmoz recently which is good at this. But it does tend to be very noisy. You'll have to sift through a lot of stuff to find targets that you'll want to deal with, but it still is worthwhile to get started if you have to go that way.

The point of all this is you're looking for initial targets. Where the big win really comes in is when you start finding other prominent people in your industry space who are doing guest posts, because then you can follow their trails and see all the things they're doing. That's really the next step here that I want to lead you to.

Once you've found authors, first of all you'll want to assess their prominence, because there are probably going to be a lot of spammy operators out there in your space that are doing guest posts, and you really don't want to follow their trails and see everywhere they've posted because you're going to get in the same kind of trouble that they're eventually going to be in. But you can see where these authors have guest posted by taking the author name in double quotes, and then put "guest post" or "guest author" or "guest contributor," those various flavors. You can then see all the places where these people have posted in the past. Wonderful way to get a long list of targets and really get your campaign off to a powerful start. To me this is really the big payoff that you're looking for in terms of developing a good target list.

Once you have this good target list, the next thing you want to do is you want to evaluate the target quality. You want to start thinking about: Are these sites where we want to be seen? Certainly if one of your prominent competitors or a prominent pundit in the industry writes on that site, that's a very good sign. Do they have a good readership? Is there a lot of social activity that happens from what they do at the site?

Also the types of links allowed. It used to be when people did guest posts, it was all about those free, in context links with rich anchor text. I am telling you that strategy, which may still work for some people, is really a Titanic looking for an iceberg. So you really want to focus on how you find targets which are actually a little more restrictive. It's actually good if they allow outbound links in the body of the article. But if they're allowing you to stuff anchor text links to yourself in the body of the article, that's actually not good for you. The main thing you should expect when you're working with the right kinds of targets for guest posting is you're going to be getting attribution, byline level links, and that actually is the safest place to be in the long term for guest posting. It's the kind of policies that you're going to find on the most valuable sites anyway.

So those are my thoughts on guest posting for today. I've enjoyed doing this Whiteboard Friday for you. Have a good day.

site operator with your competitor’s domain name + “gust
post” is also a good way to start and see where the online winners are writing... following their path and writing there is a great way to get good links and
reputation building for the business.

If one is looking for brand building and business at the same
time, he/she should invest on Guest posting as guest posting is way more than
just link….I recently did a guest post on SEOmoz and results were phenomenal
for me!

Great video Eric and spot on moosahemani! We'd like to add that you need to consider where you're posting. More and more article directories and blog networks are branding themselves as a guest blogging resource. Nothing can be farther from the truth and you might be shooting yourself in the foot by giving them content with your links. Just like with what happened during the Penguin update (but probably not as drastic).

I would also search for site:td.com "Write for us".And I prefer these kind of website because they see it as you doing a favour to them and you won't receive back a lot of replies like "yes, we do guest posting, it will cost you $£$"

Hi Cornel - "write for us" is another great phrase to search for. Note then people come back and ask for money, we simply say no. We want our content to have enough value that they will want to allow us to post because of the value to their audience. Of course, it needs to be relevant to your site too, to have the most value. These are the things that make the link a true endorsement.

This is a great spring board into guest blogging Eric, I wish I'd watched this before I started out.

The brilliant thing guest blogging can lead to is the relationships it builds with other bloggers/webmasters/agencies - within a few days of searching I already had a sizeable contacts list, within a few months I have got some really good posting opportunities which show what guest blogging is all about.

I've noticed that the trick isn't just finding the websites looking for guest content, but it's the communication you have with the website, the rapport you form with them - guest blogging has lead onto other links, features, static pages and even one or two front page body links (in context) on high authority sites.

I do think we have a lot to thank Ann Smarty for, My Blog Guest is one of my most used websites at the moment and has significantly lowered the bar for entry and made the whole thing much, much easier (and productive!).

Totally agreed! Guest posting is one of the best technique to let others know about you and it is based on reciprocal relationship. We would love to know how you get benefited out of guest blogging Chris. Your experience would help us gaining some valuable insights.

Besides the high quality links from other sites within my niche, the best gains I've made are contacts in similar job positions - other in house SEOs, outreach workers (freelance or working for a large agency). There is a sense of community, which considering how competitive the SERPs are, can be very charitable at times. One thing that became very clear, very quickly was that selfishness and arrogance doesn't get you very far in guest posting and outreach.

What I like doing to find good guest blog opportunities is type some related or [exact keyword] phrases into Google, Hit News or Blog on the right hand side. Then I contact the websites on page one of Googles SERP. IMO If they are on the first page for some of these keyword phrases they are doing something right.

Honestly, I'm not in favour of this technique. It's what we were doing early on with guest posts, but it's too similar to copycat linkbuilding, where you end up riding on someone else's coat-tails. In the context of this article (beginner guest posting) it's a good place for someone to start learning how to use content for links, though it can lead to the wrong kind of expectations when dealing with blog owners who've never considered guest posts in the past, that requires an entirely different approach.

Hi NVI - good comment, and yes, it is important to view this as a starting place. You do want to keep evolving and make sure you are not simply being a copycat. It is also important to keep in mind that there are a limited number of true authority sites in any given market space. Whether or not your competitors have been there before, you need to see what you can do to get on those sites.

One thing I did not cover in this video are strategies for getting on authority sites that do not have a track record of accepting guest posts. Huge impact if you can develop relationships that allow you to get on those. This often involves a ton of additional effort, because you have to build up a lot of trust before they will consider letting you do that.

Great Whiteboard Friday, Eric. What are your thoughts on getting started by posting on "questionable quality" blogs? I see a lot of guest post opportunities on communities like MyBlogGuest where the sites are not exactly spammy, but nonetheless, still seem a little low quality: PR 2, a few ads, 1-3 posts per day, and/or unattractive branding. Is it worth it or not to try a guest post on sites like these? Assume they don't have additonal practices going on like keyword-stuffed links in body copy.

Also, what do you think about being selective about going after opportunities that allow you to set up Author Rich Snippets?

I've had the same thoughts regarding MBG and Blogger Link Up. In fact I find the latter to be of lower quality (or maybe needs better management tools). I do agree that the domain authority tends to hover around the 20s. I have used some of these but spend more time trying to find better prospects. I think it would be smart for MBG or BLU to do their own outreach and try to increase the quality of their communities.

Mike, I think it's a mistake to target only most powerful blogs. Guest blogging is not about Google PR or link power. It's about entering a community. A new active blog might generate more loyal followers than a huge blog where it is much harder to stand out.

I agree that you can start out with some less prominent blogs, especially as it is useful to be able to show those higher tier blog owners some of your past content. However, I would not think of this as "questionable-quality", more as good quality blogs that have a smaller audience.

MyBlogGuest is a useful site to use to help you do this, and as Ann says, enter the community overall.

For me, when it comes to whiteboard friday .."if it's not rand, it's bland"

This one is a big exception. Nice job, Eric.

I feel there's a very fine line between guest posting and essentially what the blog networks are. On communities like Myblogguest and bloggerlinkup, you really have to do thorough research on targets before finding something worth writing content for. For my industry at least, that's been very rare.

I guess that if they allow you openly a link in the body with an anchor text is ok for the moment but that also means that the blog is not top quality and don't have a big community.The more restrictive a blog the bigger the community is, author link value ... etc.

I think this is the reason why Eric is saying that if they 'allow you a link is bad'.

Good and valuable blogs, websites are very restrictive and are after good content, building a big community and not SEO and links.

Hi SEOKeith - as Cornel says below, if it is a very high quality sites, they are a lot less likely to allow self-referential in-context links, especially anchor text rich ones. The editors for these sites get a tidal wave of requests for guest posts, and most of them are from people who will ultimately provide low quality posts.

From their point of view, posts with these embedded links are far more likely to be motivated by goals other than writing the best possible content, and one way the editors can protect themselves is by having a policy against them.

There are exceptions, of course, but over time I would expect these exceptions to get rarer and rarer.

One of my clients went form being a 24-year-old nobody in the fitness business to a leading expert in less than a year -- because he figured out the whole expert thing. (It will be the subject of his second book, Race To The Top: How to Become an Expert.)

Here is what we say about links on our "Want To Contribute?" page:

Links: Our high standards are based on integrity and common sense. We always put the reader first. A link or two from the text of your article to your own site can be fine. So can a carefully chosen link or two from the text of your article to related articles on other sites. Just make sure that all links make editorial sense. Do not include awkward or unnatural links that seem to "come out of nowhere" for purely promotional purposes. Do not use rich anchor text links or manipulative search engine optimization techniques. Do not include affiliate links. The best place to link to your site is usually from your author's note or byline.

Hi, guest posting is best for the brand building and promoting our site through content, with help of this we can build a relationship and communicate with other. After penguin update Google also gives huge weight-age to guest posting. so your post is really good for us to know more about the guest posting.

Make some noise about it; share it around, encourage the website to share it too! If it's a storming piece of work, people'll want to share it and if that happens not only will your brand get more exposure but the site you guest posted on will get more traffic/links and chances are they'll want you to blog again.

Guest posting is now very tricky. It's almost an acronym for article spinning, as 'T John' above me said.

When a blog - as good as it could be - is based on guest posts, it's just a nicer way of saying it's an SEO blog. I mean, no one would guest post for free\without getting a link, unless it's a super-super-blog.

On the other hand, you can't give it all up because sometimes even a super-super-blog will open its gates for some focused guest posts, and that could be your way in.

Great submission! It appears that guest blogging is on everyone's mind right now as it is a great way for companies to get new leads, brand themselves and get more SEO results.

When it comes to Guest Blogging I have found that doing quick research on Google reader to see how many people are reading the blog and how active it is being updated is very helpful, that way you can narrow down a top 10 list based on your own criteria of the blogs you want to target.

If you want to develop a relationship with the readers or/and get good SEO results than perhaps RECIPROCITY is the key. For example having a good Blog Author write on your blog and let him or her get some good new readers and SEO and then you can in exchange do the same on his or her blog.

Funny thing is, the most inquiries and leads we have had were from guest blogs where we talked about pricing or started using company product pictures and eventually were asked to STOP because the posts seemed to be too much like advertising and the blog owners wanted us to start paying them advertising money, so it ALL really comes down to your communication with the author/blog owner.

Thanks again for the great information and Happy early Fourth of July!

Guest posting is something that should be taken seriously by many. One of the remaining authoritative methods that is still liked by the search engines. If you can get a top blog to publish your post, you are in luck.

Hi Markwilston, don't be puzzle with guest blogging, it is very simple way to increase your website visibility and to get the backlink. with this activity we can get eaisly a backlink and side by side get the visibility of the website with new visitors.

I think guest blogging is losing its charm not because it is not worth but because of the massive spam and unethical practices, most websites are not willing to accept guest posts. It is now hard to identify the genuine, original guest posts since the article spinners have significantly improved and it is hard to detect spun articles. A lot of request that we get by email proposing a business partnership will end up being a request to publish a spun article, which we realize only after spending a considerable amount of time for discussions. For this reason, a large number of webmasters have stopped accepting guests blogs from guests, instead, would accept articles only from people who have established some credibility. Going forward, this is going to become a bigger challenge, in my opinion.

This is why sites like My Blog Guest, BLU and similar are so important. Also, if it was easy to get good guest posting opportunities then everyone would start to see diminished returns before too long.

Good point. You should see some of the rubbish I receive, it's as if they don't visit my websites and read the articles, write for the readers. They're just knocking off generic blurb that's purely for link purposes.However, done well, it really does work - because it adds value to everyone - the website owner, the website visitor, and you. And I've found that if you have something that will add value, your acceptance rate is up around 100%.The people who are going to get hit are not necessarily the spammers with their spun content (because they don't matter), but the webmasters who mistakenly (or otherwise) accept it. They effectively become splogs.And you're right - it's going to be a case of standing out from the noise, and the best signal is your own authority and credibility (G+ authorship anyone?)

I see there a few other people that receive a lot of really bad guest post submissions. I agree with a poster above that mentioned he receives submissions that are obvious they have not even read what the blog is about. For this reason my beginning adventure into receiving guest posts has been almost more hassle than it has been worth. I can only hope that the future holds better.

I like the way you described it. Just what I have been doing. I have seen my ranking increase since. Check out my website for Birmingham Alabama. Only been up going on 2 months. I already got 1 page on Birmingham Marketing Agency.

A good reminder for beginner guest bloggers is to take some time to read the blog they are submitting to. Does your article contain useful and relevant content for the blog's readers? Is your article written in a complimentary style?

I warn guest bloggers that I'll only publish quality relevant content, but even after a stern warning, I usually just end up editing their submission with the delete button.

what i actually think about gust posting is to have a very unique presentation about an unique topic is work for you like cherry on ice-cream cup! so for me the most important thing is to choose unique topic and present it the way that shows you are expert on that topic... :)

In the Penguin era Guest posts are emerging as one of the most sought options for online branding. I too believe that if leveraged consciously and meticulously it can reap great benefit to your brand. However, I also believe that Guest Posting alone is not the only thing that can help you go much rather it should be complemented with other marketing efforts too like Social Media, Content generation, Newsletter promotion, Offline marketing approach and Link-Building (Not Aggressive) one.

Eric, Your post came right at exact time when every webmaster is relying much on generating content and I am sure your insight will help us get maximum of our content marketing efforts.

In fact SEO works more when many campaigns are undertaken simultaneously and con-currently provided each campaign is constructive and analytical.

This is a good place to start. I did notice some sites that allow you to pay for post and it is very enticing. From what Eric is saying this is not very beneficial for the long run. This White board gives me quite a few ideas for some of my clients. Thanks

Collecting guest post link prospects is much easier by using lovely tools like the one from Ethan Lyon, ScrapeBox, "inpostauthor:" etc.

Thanks Eric for adding some fresh knowledge on guest posting. Love the idea of evaluating your targets first. It's always important to know whom you are talking to before you send emails to them. I #askdistilled on one session and answered by Rob Ousbey, Adria Saracino and Kate Morris of Distilled Seattle. Hope this one add more chunk on this great whiteboard friday post - how to connect with people when doing outreach for guest posts